Speaking at the SkyBridge Alternatives Conference in Las
Vegas on Thursday, the former speaker expressed relief that
Cruz had bowed out of the race.

"Thank God the guy from Texas didn't win," Boehner said of Cruz,
according to Business Insider senior editor Josh Barro, who
attended the conference.

During his tenure as speaker, Boehner and Cruz clashed repeatedly
over tactics and legislation.

Their most prominent battle came amid the 2013 government
shutdown that Cruz orchestrated with the help of conservative
members of Congress, who would later go on to form the House
Freedom Caucus. The group fought Boehner on everything
from spending bills to trade.

Though he's largely vanished from the national spotlight since
stepping down last year, Boehner hasn't stopped criticizing
Cruz. At Stanford University last month, the speaker labeled Cruz
a "miserable
son of a b----" and said that he was "Lucifer in the flesh."

Speaking on Thursday, the former speaker described the 2013
shutdown as possibly the "dumbest thing he ever saw," telling the
audience that it was clear to the Republican leadership that the
shutdown would not yield the goals sought by Cruz and his House
allies.

"I don't know what the knuckleheads want. To this day, I don't
know what they want. All I know is they didn't want to do what I,
the leader of the majority party, wanted to do," Boehner said of
the House Freedom Caucus.

During the event on Thursday, moderator Steven Rattner asked
Boehner whether he supported some of Trump's
more controversial suggestions — including his proposal to
bar Muslims from entering the US, his proposal to send
back Syrian refugees, and his suggestion to again use
waterboarding, the controversial interrogation technique outlawed
by Congress in 2009.

The speaker suggested that he did not support any of the
proposals.

"This is an unusual dance, but every time you come out of a
primary, you have to do an unusual dance," Boehner
said. "This one is a little more unusual than most."